Flash Dance Fiction

The Friday Flash Fiction Happy Hour at JD Mader’s website is just getting happier…well, when it’s not being check-under-the-bed creepy. So many amazing stories, so much creativity in once place I swear I saw the Internet dip down in one corner. Here are a few of my pieces, inspired by changing seasons and changing lives. Maybe next week you’ll join us for some two-minute freewriting fun.

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Stop talking. Slow down. Wait. Just wait. Right there. If I look close, I can see a minute slide into the next, an hour tumble into the one after that. I can see the shift behind your smile, the length of you getting taller, your honey-spun hair growing longer. The sweep of your slender, delicate arm. Stop. Talking. Slow. Spin slower, please. The days are growing shorter, the weeks faster, the shift from baby to child to woman something I can’t control, something running so fast I’m gasping for air but maybe if we slow down and breathe. Breathe. If I watch the shift in the glittering blue diamonds in the eyes that were a gift from your father, we can know each other better before you launch a jete into your brilliant future.

———-

We circled each other, the years after your father’s transfer to Texas melting like hot wax off the statue children we used to be. Your red hair shone crazy through my mother’s lilac bushes; we compared toys on birthdays and on Christmas morning, but what’s left to compare now, without the day-to-day jokes and shared silliness of being five years old together to bond us. What’s left to say? We stared and compared, you in your designer labels and me in sneakers with the soles flapping loose; you in expensive highlights and me with a ponytail holder I found in the bottom of the drawer. When your mother called your name you were eager to run back to her, to break the awkward silence of too many years apart. I didn’t blame you. I would have done the same. You just got the call first.

———-

She stands on the creaking back deck and holds her arms out to catch the leaves raining down, to catch the mild, wood-scented air as if to gather it up and store it for the winter. The planks are beginning to rot, soft, broken places that she doesn’t dare move toward. It needs replacing; an inspector would take one look and slap a warning label on it, on her, on every one of her thoughts lately. Warning: dangerous. Warning: might incite a riot. Warning: might be hazardous to your mental health. She will not let them take this place. It can cave in as far as she’s concerned, can collapse into a three-little-pigs aftermath disaster, but it’s her place, the first thing that captured her imagination, the first private spot where she was allowed to stand and watch the clouds amble across the sky, and if that is gone, where will she go where she can cry safe from the eyes and stop-it-now murmurings of the world? Already she hears one of her neighbors’ boots crackling through the underbrush, sees his broad smile split his face as he waves and asks if she’s all right, if there’s anything he can do. Can you save me a slice of this day, this forest, the blue afternoon? He would think she was crazy. His world does not function like that. It is a succession of practical things, of chain saws and cutting wood for the fire and cracking open a beer to watch the game. She lets out a long, slow, breath and says she is fine and asks about his wife and kids.

Thank you, Dale. It’s fun. And it feels like each week I’m inspired to let go a little more, inspired by all these great authors writing together. I say it’s a kind of magic, but I really believe that.